Mapmaker, Matchmaker

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Welcome back to Beyond the Polls. This week we get
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into the redistricting weeds with real clear politics Sean Trendy.
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Let's dive in.
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Well, we just had primary super Bowl. Six states, including
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the nation's largest California, un voted on Tuesday night. And
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what did we learn. Well, first of all, we are
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learning even as you're listening to this, something we already knew,
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which is that California's vote counting system is outmoded, behind
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the times, and utterly unfit for purpose. The fact that
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we have five million votes counted as of the Wednesday
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when I'm recording this, but there's probably three to four
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million and they're not even sure left to count and
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it will take them weeks to do that. It defies belief.
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The fact is that there are countries that don't count
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all of their votes on election night, but there are
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good reasons for it. In New Zealand, they have special
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ballots that have to be collected, and they count everything
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except those special ballots and then account them all once.
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In Australia they get their vote counting done in about
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two weeks, and it's a smaller percentage of the vote
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of late arriving male ballots or early cast ballots that
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hadn't been tallied on election nine. Now, the fact that
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California takes so long is just unbelievable, and at some
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point one has to think that if you can't perform
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your self, reform will be forced upon you. And so
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what that means is that in California at least there
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are races that we won't know for a week or
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so who's going to make the final two in terms
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of getting to the general election, because they have an
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all party primary, and you can have two Democrats or
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two Republicans or even independence. And this may happen in
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a key congressional district that Kevin Kiley, who is a Republican,
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well he was a Republican, he switched to being an independent.
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And as we speak, Kevin Kylie is in first place
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in the sixth Congressional district and a Republican who spent
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almost no money but was the only person on the
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ballot with a Republican after his name is in second.
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One expects that because of the large number of ballots
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that are out and the fact that many of them
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are likely to tilt Democrat, that the highest ranking Democrat
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will probably pass the Republican and get in the race
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against Kylie. Probably not be a case where Kylie slips
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out of the race entirely, but the fact that we'll
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have to wait two maybe three weeks before we.
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Know this is.
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One of the strangest and most unacceptable things about California voting.
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But what we know from California is that the fear
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that Democrats had that there was going to be a
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lockout ended up being fictional. Steve Hill will probably finish
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second again because of the tilt of late arriving ballots
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that tend to be more Democratic in that state. He'll
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probably finish second to Chavier Bashera, but will also probably
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be Tom Steyer. As I'm recording this, Hilton has about
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a four hundred thousand vote lead over styr Stier has
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been getting under twenty percent of the vote. Even with
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a Democratic lead. There's no reason to think that Stire's
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suddenly going to overtake bsher and become the choice of
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all these voters who voted late, which suggests that he'll
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narrow the gap, but he probably will not win the
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remaining three to four million votes by the fifteen percent
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margin that he would need over Hilton to surpass him,
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particularly since he's been getting under twenty percent of the vote. Absolutely,
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it justifies belief that his margin would go his share
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the vote would go up so much and Hilton's wuld
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declined so much that there would be a fourteen point
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differential over the remaining vote.
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So we're going to.
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See whether or not a Republican can win in California.
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Common wisdom holes that he can't. I would say, as
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much as I personally know Steve and like and respect him,
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I would give him a minimal chance. But the fact is,
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and this is a little known fact unless you stare
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at polls all the time. But of course that's one
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of the reasons you listen to this podcast because I do,
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is that majority of Californians say they're unhappy with Governor
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Newsom's performance and that they're unhappy with the direction of the
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state is going on. It's not a huge majority, but
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that would be Hilton's angle, is to say, you know
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you're unhappy one change, why don't you elect a real
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change agent, probably enough to maybe have him do better
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than a Republican might ordinarily do even in a bad
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year for Republicans, which is what this is shaping up
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to be. But at least he gets the one on
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one chance to make his case that he wants and
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that is something that the primary has made clear. So
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other than that, what do we have we learned? Well,
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the first thing I'd say we've learned is that Donald
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Trump is not invincible. That in Iowa, Donald Trump came
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in at the last minute to endorse a Congressman, Randy Fienstra.
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There has been a poll that came out that had
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Fienstra behind a farmer named Daklahn, and Trump came in
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with his full and complete and total endorsement for Fienstro.
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And since Iowa has early voting, but it's not a
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huge early voting, I think most observers and I count
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myself as one, thought, Okay, well, Fienstree may be behind
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by a couple of points, but you should expect Republicans
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to hear the endorsement and get in line as they
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have everywhere else and back Fienstrom. In fact, you found
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the opposite. In fact, in a number of counties as
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you looked, Fienstro did better in the early voting than
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he did in the election voting and long beat him,
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not by very much. It was by about under a point.
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But it is telling that President's endorsement did not.
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Carry through.
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And why do I think that might be? Well, as
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I say in my newsletter, Margin of Victory, which comes
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out every Wednesday morning through the Washington Post, but you
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don't have to be a Post subscriber to get it.
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Just sign up and you will get it. Lon ran
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a campaign where he wasn't trying to be more Maga
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than now. His campaign. Go to his website and he'll
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be talking about local issues. He talks about Maha, he
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talks about ending reducing rates of cancer, he talks about
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preventing out of staters from buying Iowa's farmland. In other words,
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he had a very very unique Iowa focus identity, and
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it proved to be persuasive to a lot of people.
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And I think that's an interesting counter cultural, counterintuitive factor,
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which is that so many Republicans are running as more
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Magi than Now or running as Magalite. And it may
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very well be that if you've defined that you're playing
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the Maggie game, and the Maga Master lays down the
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laws to which of the contenders he likes, that the
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Maga Master wins the Maggi game. But if you're not
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playing the Maggie game, maybe you can win the bigger game.
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It'll be interesting to see whether other candidates begin to
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try and do that, which is to think outside the box.
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Of course, it has to be authentic and it has
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to be real. Zachlon has a very persuasive biography as
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somebody who came from a farm, longtime family farm. The
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family had to sell and after he made his money,
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he went back and bought the family farm. So he
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has a very authentic Iowa story to tell. I don't
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think you can make a silk out of a sow's ear,
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But for people who can find something that's unusual and
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different and sell that to Republican voters, it may very
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well be that there's room even in this Republican party.
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But as it is, all we know is that Donald
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Trump took his first loss in his endorsement. He won
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many other endorsements. His endorsed choice in Montana won easily
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defeated the secretary of State and a former state senator
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to get the nomination in the Montana's first congressional district.
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But the fact is the king can be beaten, and
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zach Long perhaps has given us a Roadmack. What's the
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other thing that we've learned along. What we've learned is
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that the civil war or the insurgency in the Democratic
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Party between an establishment and the progressives is nowhere near
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in them. You had battlefront after battlefront, and in most
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cases the establishment candidate came out on top. But of
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course the Democratic establishment candidate tends to be on the
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left anyway. And so when you had somebody like Karen
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Bass defeat Nithia Rahman's battle to win a spot in
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the runoff in LA's mayor race, it's not because Karen
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Bass is some screaming centrist. It's that she's liberal enough
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or progressive enough to prevent a progressive from unseeing her.
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But what we're seeing is, first of all, progressives do
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breakthrough sometimes. The Bernie AOC choice defeated the establishment choice
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in Montana one, which may be disturbing to Democrats because
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that is the more democratic seat and it is just
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democratic enough that this is a way year they can
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think about carrying it. It's the sort of seat that
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John Tester, for example, could have carried, or Steve Bullock
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could have carried. But you're not running John tester or
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Steve b Look, now you're running AOC Bernie left wing
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candidate in that seat. You had a case in New
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Jersey where Adam Hammawe is the nominee and the putative
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congressman in his very safe Democratic seat in central New Jersey, Trenton,
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Princeton and some areas going into the southern parts.
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Of the Newark area.
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And he's a person who was endorsed by Bernie Democratic
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Socialists AOC, and it wasn't really closed. You know, he
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was the only candidate who ran well in all parts
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of the district. He got twenty eight percent of the vote,
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nearly double what the second place candidate. That's a thirteen
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way primary, and one guy got twenty eight percent of
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the vote, but nobody else there wasn't even a strong challenger.
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So the fact is that you've got examples where the
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establishment candidate did well, but you've got these examples where
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the progressors breakthrough. And another example is in California where
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you had a progressive backed challenger, Randy Viegas, who is
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not yet clear he is running against State Senator jez
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Meet Baines to take on David Valadeo in California's twenty
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second district he has had, but there's so many ballots
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out he could lose that lead. And of course, again
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in a moderate too moderately conservative, but Democratic leaning farm area,
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the argument would be, you'd rather face as a Republican
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valade would clearly rather face the extremists than the person
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who can't be as caricatured in an ad. And then
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you had the eighty one year old Doris Matt Suey,
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who is right now leading with about a third of
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the vote, and it looks like she will face another
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Democrat in the general election, a young Sacramento City councilwoman
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who is running as an unabashed progressive as well as
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being somebody who is forty years younger than the incumbent,
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and may very well win in the fall. But at
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the very least, even when the establishment wins, they have
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to look over their shoulder and see where the progressives are.
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Because even when the progressives are losing, as they have
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in most of their challenges, they're running strongly. It's not
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like you can say, well, here's this DSA back candidate
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and they get eight percent of the boat. There are
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a couple of examples of that there was, but you
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see many more examples of a progressive candidate either winning
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or coming close or doing and getting doing well. And
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when you have that consistent fire, even victories by the establishment,
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if they're unimpressive, victories means that they escape not by
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the skin of their teeth, but they escape without ease.
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And every victory for an insurgent encourages more insurgents. The
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fact is Homawe was endorsed by virtually every member of
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the squad. Chris rab Even, who had been elected or
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nominated and will be elected in November in the most
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democratic seat in the country in Pennsylvania, was also a
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squad endorsed candidate, and he endorsed HOMOWI. When you take
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a look at who's being ded the squad or squad
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adjacent people are going to be doubling this time in
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the House. And that's even under a worst case scenario.
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For that, there's so many progressive challengers that are on
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the ballot in the next month well have much better sense.
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So if the Democratic establishment wins three quarters of these battles,
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I guess that's a good sign for the Democratic establishment.
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But for people who.
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Had virtually no representation in the House of Representatives ten
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years ago. To be adding two five eight members to
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their ranks every two years is a sign of particular growth.
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And this is going to be particularly important going to
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twenty twenty eight because you look and then it was
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one name I haven't mentioned. I'm going to mention him now,
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and that's Roe Connell. Rocanna is a congressman from the
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Silicon Valley. He originally ran as a business friendly candidate,
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but once in office, became one of the nation's leading progressives.
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He has been active nationally. You will see Rocanna's endorsement
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behind virtually every progressive challenger in the country, and that
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means he's been rumored to want to run for president,
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and he is making the sort of moves one would
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expect if one is going to run for president, and
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he's making friends across the country, just as you would
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need to if you're planning is to run for president.
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When I take a look at the Democratic primary, I
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look at the three people leading every pole, Kamala Harris,
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Gavin Newsom, and people to judge, and I see people
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who are generally trying to straddle the lane between center,
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left and left. And that's probably the name strategy. But
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I've been following politics all my life, and typically the
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surprise candidate in the raids is the candidate who captures
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the imagination of what I call the unserved constituency. That is,
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there's a lot of people in a party, but they
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don't have anyone who's competing for them. They will flock
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to somebody who competes for them.
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You know.
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Donald Trump was somebody who ran that to the nomination
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because there was a massive unserved constituency that we would
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now call maga. It was this accumulation agglomeration of economic
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populace and cultural nationalists at the time, and he wrote
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it to victory. Mike Huckabee and Rick Santoum wrote the
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Evangelicals to victory. When everyone was trying to be some
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sort of Tea party person or or moderate moderate business
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establishment or Republican. Howard Dean ran up almost looked as
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the in November of two thousand and three by being
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the Then we would call it the liberals, but now
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it would be the progressive wing running. As he said
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that I'm running as the Democratic for the democratic wing
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of the Democratic Party, and he captured the imagination or
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people wanted full throated liberalism. Well, there's a significant constituency
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that wants full throated progressivism. That's what we're seeing every
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primary or we have that challenge. And how the Democrats
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navigate this in twenty twenty seven and they'll run up
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to twenty twenty eight is going to be fascinating and
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potentially determinative of the outcome. Millions of things determined the
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presidential election outcomes, but this is probably one of the
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known unknowns that is least discussed. And every week when
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there's a primary, we get scorecard as to who's ahead
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and what the strength of the insurgency is.
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And let me tell you, the insurgency is not going
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away any terms.
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Well, twenty twenty six mid term cycle may be known
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for a lot of things. That may be known for
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a blue wave, that may be known for an incredible
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Republican co recovery after they looked like they might be
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hit by a blue wave. But what it will certainly
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be known for is the at least in the last
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few decades, unprecedented scope and sweep of mid decatal redistricting.
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And here to talk to us about that and talk
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to us especially about how we can draw districts so
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that we don't have partisan jerry mandering skewing the House
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is redistricting expert and political analyst Sean Trendy, who is
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the senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics. Sean, welcome
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back to be.
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On the polls.
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Hey, thanks for having me.
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Well, most people know you through your political analysis. You
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know you do write and have written for many, many years,
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excellent pieces at RCP and also with your visiting scholarship
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or professorship.
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I'm not sure scholarship.
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You're the visiting scholar since you have a PhD at
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the American Enterprise Institute. But you have drawn plans and
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you were one of the two architects of the reinstated
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Virginia Plan that those of us in the Commonwealth of
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Virginia will be voting under in the ELECTIONSYS November. Can
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you tell us a little bit about your experience and
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first how you came to that position and secondly how
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you approached the problem.
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Yeah, it was. It was a lot of fun actually,
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but it was eye opening because you know election Twitter,
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I did a lot of what they do right, just
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drew maps. I was like, hey, look you can do
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this or this or why did those fools do this.
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It's a nothing to sit down and get into the
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nitty gritty of how a district will actually be drawn
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when you know it's going to actually be used in
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an election. And we were fortunate because we were insulated
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from political concerns, so we didn't even have to deal
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with like, you know, Representative Bubba who wants his cousin's
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gas station in this district just because and.
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Just to jump that's because you were appointed along with
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the Democrat Bernie Groffman, to be the two special Masters
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by the Virginia State Supreme Court once every other avenue
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of redistricting had been exhausted in inability to do anything.
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That's right, The Virginia Constitution now has an independent commission.
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It deadlocked, and when it's deadlocked, it throws it to
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the Supreme Court. Well, the Supreme Court justices didn't want
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to draw the maps themselves, and so they had each
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party nominated a special Master. The first thing, well, the
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nominated three in the court selected one from each. Listen,
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the first thing they told us is, okay, you are
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no longer the nominees of the Republican or the Democratic Party.
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You are special Masters of the Commonwealth in Virginia, and
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so we sat down and the first thing we would
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have wanted to do would have been to, you know,
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do a complete VRA analysis Voting Rights Act, which is
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a very complex, time intensive analysis, and as it turned out,
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we just didn't have time to do that. We were
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appointed shortly before Thanksgiving and we had to draw something
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like one hundred and seventy districts, get public comment, and
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draw them again. So, long story short, we took that.
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Because you weren't just doing congressional district right, the legislature
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at both houses of the legislature as well, that's.
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Right, the state Senate, which is forty in the state House,
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which I think is one hundred, Yeah, it's one hundred.
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North Carolina is one hundred and twenty. So so it
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was a challenging task, but we started. We said instead,
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and I'm given how things went, I'm glad we did this.
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We said, I bet that if we constrain ourselves to
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good government traditional redistricting principles, we're going to draw a
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map that maybe has a touch of a Republican bias,
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but not much of one in Virginia, and that is
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still going to elect a lot of minority members to
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the state legislature, and so it was a pretty straightforward
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set of guidelines we had. We said, we aren't going
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to split counties more than we have to. When we
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go into a municipality, we're going to draw within that
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municipality before we exit it. We're going to fill it
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up before we exit it. So don't split towns and
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cities unless you have to. We made a rule that
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we weren't going to cross the Blue Ridge more than
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we had to, because A it's kind of a community
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of interest in the Shenandoah, and b that was kind
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of a trick that the parties had been using for gerrymandering.
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It's heavily Republican, so you can either make blue districts
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red using it, or you can make red districts blue
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by diluting it. So that's how we approached it, and
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it worked out great. We ended up with good looking districts.
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The the basic Republicans and Democrats liked it. The partisans
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on either side didn't like it. But that's a feature,
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not a bug, and it's it's a it's an illustration
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of how this sort of conception that you have to
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draw extreme gerry manders to kind of make up for
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you know, if you if you use kind of good
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government principles, you're going to skew the maps so badly
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that you're either not going to get minority groups or
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you're gonna get too many Republicans or Democrats. It's just,
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at least in Virginia just wasn't true. We ended up
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with pretty good maps.
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Yeah.
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I read a column of the bull Disclosure supporting your
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plan when it was drafted because I liked it so much.
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And for people who don't listen to every episode, I
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learned the black arts and cage and had my own
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experience with the redistricting in nineteen eighty three when I
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was the prime architect of a effort to replace the
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Democratic Garry Mander by a ballot initiative. I drew the maps,
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and the Supreme Court, on a six to one vote
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decided that we could not get to the vote of
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the people. And I want you to guess the partisan
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balance of that court, and.
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I got on Lemon say, six to one.
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Well, bingo, bingo.
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An experience I have never forgotten, but it was one
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of the things on the partisan aspect of it is
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I believe and I'm doing this for a memory, is
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that this was the sort of map that if you
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looked at the twenty twenty presidential results, Joe Biden would
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have carried roughly around fifty five or fifty six of
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the one hundred House of Delegates seats, which and he
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got about fifty five or fifty six percent of the vote,
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and it would have carried six of the eleven congressional seats,
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and Glenn Young Kim would have carried the majority of
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delegate seats when he won the state. And you did
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it without looking and of course everybody has a rough
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sense of the partisan nature, but you didn't without looking
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at the details of politics in the sense of, oh, well,
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this is we have to move this place in this
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way so we can get one extra marginal district. That's correct,
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isn't it that you didn't You didn't make those political ajustments.
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So the first time, the first lines that we drew,
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we did draw a line to politics. And then the
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way that worked was we opened it up for public comment.
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And what we were worried about, and there were a
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few instances where we got taken in, but what we
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were worried about was people coming in and saying, well,
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you know, I think you need to do this because
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it keeps the berry farm together. And it turns out
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that if you keep the berry farm together, it flips
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the partisanship of the district. And so like, there were
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some people who insisted we needed to draw a community
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of interests that took like the colleges in Roanoke can
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link them up with Virginia Tech and one in uh
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I can't. There's another one along the way. And if
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you did that, lo and behold, you get another Democratic district. Well,
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we weren't going to do that. We knew we had
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a balanced map, so we did pay attention when we
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redrew to whether we were being you know, whether someone
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was using it as a pretext to get another Democratic
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or Republican district. But at its fundamentals, you're right, we didn't.
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So what does that tell us?
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What does your experience tell us about what single member
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districts can be drawn as, Because one of the things
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my experience is in following this is that if you
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can have compact if you only look at something like
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compactness and don't look at other factors, you can draw
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compact looking districts that are in fact, a disguised gerrymander.
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But if you look at all these other things like
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counties and regions and so forth, it's much harder to
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do that. What should redistricting look like when it's not
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simply a naked exercise and power?
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Yeah, so I would modify that a little bit. There
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there are states like Wisconsin where basically all the Democrats
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now are in Milwaukee or Madison. Yeah, and so it's
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going to have a Republican lean, but it's counterbalanced by
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states like Massachusetts or California, where the Democratic coefficient coalition
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is incredibly efficient, and you would get that leaning democratic.
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So it mostly counterbalances.
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But when we're talking about congressional districts on the.
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National level, that's right, that's right. But I think a
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lot of people who get involved in these debates lose
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sight of some foundational questions. You know, why do we
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have single member districts in the first place, and what
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are they supposed to represent? Because my basic response to
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everyone who's like, well, that map is politically unfair, is well,
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if you want it to be politically fair, there is
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a well known system of elections beloved across the world.
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It's called proportional representation, and if you really care about
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making sure the districts are balanced, you don't want districts
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who want proportional representation. The reason that we have single
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member districts in my view, and this is why I
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think Compactinson Counties and things like that are important. The
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reason we have single member districts in my view, is
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an understanding that place matters, that there are aspects of
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representation that go beyond partisanship. You know, most people, their
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interaction with their member of Congress is, oh, my gosh,
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I have an overseas trip and I just realized that
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I needed to get a passport for my kid. Can
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we get this expedite? And so you call the member's
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office and they have a staffer who's dedicated to this
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kind of stuff and gets done what needs to get done,
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and that matters. You know, the needs of someone in
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downtown Columbus, what they need from the government is different
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than what someone from you know, rural from suburban Ohio needs,
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which is different from what someone from rural Ohio needs.
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And a representative and we think of the big especially
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if as partisans, people think of the big ticket votes.
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How do you vote on abortion rights or gay rights,
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or or you know, trans rights or social security reform.
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But there is so much that goes on at the
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federal government beyond those type of big picture issues. Now
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the response to that is usually well, yeah, but people
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mostly vote for the party. Now, look at what's going
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to happen. Probably maybe I should say now to Susan Collins,
478
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look what happened to John Tester, And it's like, well,
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that's been the rule for twenty years. And the fact
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that that's been a norm for twenty years doesn't mean
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we should jettison a system that has existed for two
482
00:29:15.359 --> 00:29:17.960
hundred and thirty or two hundred and forty at this point.
483
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:22.839
So yeah, there's just these kind of foundational representative representational
484
00:29:23.039 --> 00:29:26.880
things at work, so long as you are actually drawing
485
00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:30.079
those compact, reasonably shaped districts.
486
00:29:30.319 --> 00:29:36.000
And also respecting things like city boundaries county boundaries. Like
487
00:29:36.039 --> 00:29:38.680
I said, you can draw compact districts, but if you
488
00:29:38.839 --> 00:29:43.200
draw compact districts and you're splitting a minuscule city five
489
00:29:43.319 --> 00:29:46.799
different ways, you're probably doing it for political purpose rather
490
00:29:46.880 --> 00:29:50.160
than trying to find a good government reason to take
491
00:29:50.519 --> 00:29:54.400
a seventy thousand person city and give them virtually no
492
00:29:54.480 --> 00:29:57.240
ability to elect a representative on their own.
493
00:29:58.079 --> 00:30:01.039
You know, it's funny. So for the longest in Ohio,
494
00:30:01.759 --> 00:30:07.759
Republicans split Columbus down the middle, and people were apoplectic
495
00:30:07.799 --> 00:30:11.640
about it. Everyone knows it's because Columbus was more democratic
496
00:30:11.640 --> 00:30:13.119
than everything else, and so if you split it, you
497
00:30:13.119 --> 00:30:17.079
got two Republican districts. Well, so, starting I think in
498
00:30:17.160 --> 00:30:22.160
twenty ten, Republicans created a Democratic district in Columbus and
499
00:30:22.200 --> 00:30:25.319
people lost their minds again because at that point, Franklin
500
00:30:25.359 --> 00:30:27.839
County become blue enough that if you split the city
501
00:30:27.839 --> 00:30:31.640
of Columbus you would get two Democratic districts. And it's
502
00:30:31.759 --> 00:30:35.599
just like, okay, what, what's the actual principle here, Like,
503
00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:39.920
you know, the actual principle is we want Democrats, just
504
00:30:39.960 --> 00:30:42.160
like it's we want Republicans in other states. But I
505
00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:44.359
agree with you. I think I think they have it
506
00:30:44.480 --> 00:30:47.599
right right now, which is that the city of Columbus
507
00:30:47.640 --> 00:30:50.200
has unique needs and it doesn't need to be in
508
00:30:50.240 --> 00:30:54.079
a district with you know where I live in in
509
00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:57.880
you know, Lewis Center, or least of all, with the
510
00:30:57.960 --> 00:31:00.319
rural areas. So I think they got it right.
511
00:31:02.839 --> 00:31:05.640
I Mean, one question I've wondered is I'm thinking about
512
00:31:05.680 --> 00:31:10.799
how to constrain gerrymanderin. I wonder whether or not the
513
00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:15.720
idea that metropolitan areas are de facto communities of interest
514
00:31:15.839 --> 00:31:19.279
because you can keep Columbus. But then if you're taking
515
00:31:19.680 --> 00:31:23.079
the north side, because Columbus is larger, as you know,
516
00:31:23.480 --> 00:31:25.640
Columbus is larger than it needs to be for one
517
00:31:25.640 --> 00:31:32.680
congressional district, and there's impacted non totally surrounded or non
518
00:31:32.759 --> 00:31:38.519
city populations within Columbus, I believe, And so what you
519
00:31:38.559 --> 00:31:41.599
do with the Franklin County outside of them. Republicans of course,
520
00:31:41.640 --> 00:31:44.960
will split up the Franklin County places so that some
521
00:31:45.039 --> 00:31:47.880
of it get attached to Republican rural areas one hundred
522
00:31:47.920 --> 00:31:52.039
miles away. What about adding to the traditional criteria that
523
00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:55.960
metropolitan regions have their or metropolitan areas have their own
524
00:31:56.000 --> 00:32:00.000
community of interests, so that you can't take suburban Columbus
525
00:32:00.079 --> 00:32:04.559
that's left over after the after you make the one
526
00:32:04.599 --> 00:32:06.799
city and then add it to all these rural areas.
527
00:32:06.799 --> 00:32:08.880
You kind of have to try and well, maybe added
528
00:32:08.960 --> 00:32:12.359
to suburban Delaware County or whatever else is in the
529
00:32:12.759 --> 00:32:16.480
nonpartisan defined metropolitan area. And that would be another way
530
00:32:16.519 --> 00:32:22.640
to limit jerrymanderer's ability to create political outcomes by ignoring
531
00:32:22.720 --> 00:32:24.160
real communities of interests.
532
00:32:24.920 --> 00:32:29.680
Yeah, so that gets into the rule that Bernie and
533
00:32:29.680 --> 00:32:33.759
I had, which was you can't leave a county until
534
00:32:33.759 --> 00:32:37.279
you filled up the county, and you can't leave a
535
00:32:39.240 --> 00:32:43.799
municipality until you filled the municipality. And so the idea is, okay,
536
00:32:43.839 --> 00:32:47.039
you would draw that Columbus district. Then you would start
537
00:32:47.119 --> 00:32:50.240
drawing the second district in Franklin County, and you would
538
00:32:50.279 --> 00:32:52.279
have to start it in whatever's left over in the
539
00:32:52.319 --> 00:32:54.839
city of Columbus, and then you'd have to fill up
540
00:32:54.880 --> 00:32:57.119
Franklin County before you could go into any of the
541
00:32:57.160 --> 00:32:58.799
adjacent kinds. At that point, you're going to have another
542
00:32:58.839 --> 00:33:03.240
democratic district, you know. And so maybe if you're feeling
543
00:33:03.319 --> 00:33:06.319
really aggressive, you go into Pickaway County, which is kind
544
00:33:06.359 --> 00:33:08.240
of rural to the south, and you get some rural
545
00:33:08.279 --> 00:33:12.279
areas that way. But you know nothing. What I think
546
00:33:12.279 --> 00:33:14.640
people don't get is that nothing is going to get
547
00:33:14.799 --> 00:33:18.519
rid of jerrymandering because people are smart, they're clever, they'll
548
00:33:18.519 --> 00:33:22.079
always find a way to get around a rule. The
549
00:33:22.160 --> 00:33:24.640
idea is to cabinet in. The idea is to say okay,
550
00:33:24.759 --> 00:33:27.000
like people are going to be putting thumbs on the scale.
551
00:33:27.400 --> 00:33:30.799
What we don't want is what happened in California or
552
00:33:30.839 --> 00:33:34.359
Illinois or Texas. You know, these kind of oddly shaped,
553
00:33:34.599 --> 00:33:40.319
stretched out jerrymanders. And so that's I think the way
554
00:33:40.359 --> 00:33:42.640
to do it, and you can put some notion. The
555
00:33:43.000 --> 00:33:47.079
community of interest thing gets a little tricky because it's
556
00:33:47.119 --> 00:33:50.160
such a malleable standard. I do think if we're going
557
00:33:50.200 --> 00:33:52.880
to do that, it needs to be a clearly defined thing,
558
00:33:53.000 --> 00:33:57.000
such as you can't leave, you have to treat un
559
00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:01.079
metropolitan areas is defined by the sense is this the
560
00:34:01.079 --> 00:34:03.519
same way as you would a municipality or something to
561
00:34:03.559 --> 00:34:08.079
that effect. As long as the clear, clean, straightforward rule,
562
00:34:08.599 --> 00:34:09.800
I am on board.
563
00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:14.599
Now again, the partisan could argue that you know all
564
00:34:14.679 --> 00:34:16.840
this stuff about place, I hear you, or I hear you,
565
00:34:17.400 --> 00:34:20.920
but the way our country is right now, we should
566
00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:26.239
sacrifice the advantages that come from place for the advantages
567
00:34:26.320 --> 00:34:30.519
that come from balance between the competing factions. How you
568
00:34:30.599 --> 00:34:33.239
would you respond to somebody who would say, who would
569
00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:34.079
make that argument?
570
00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:38.320
Well, like I said, I think, I think first off,
571
00:34:38.400 --> 00:34:42.119
if you're a partisan, then this jerry mandric debate is
572
00:34:42.159 --> 00:34:44.639
kind of like if you're that partisan. This gerrymandering debate
573
00:34:44.679 --> 00:34:46.960
is kind of beside the point. But the reason that
574
00:34:47.079 --> 00:34:50.480
place is so important. There's actually a concept in geography.
575
00:34:50.519 --> 00:34:53.800
If you take a spatial statistics class or get into geography,
576
00:34:54.440 --> 00:34:56.719
the first things you learn is called Tobler's first law
577
00:34:56.719 --> 00:35:00.159
of geography, and it basically it's straightforward. It's it's that
578
00:35:00.239 --> 00:35:02.400
everything is related, but things that are closer to each
579
00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:04.519
other are more related than things that are far apart.
580
00:35:05.920 --> 00:35:09.000
And that's what place is getting to and what I
581
00:35:09.000 --> 00:35:12.880
think single member districts are supposed to encapsulate that. Look,
582
00:35:13.519 --> 00:35:16.039
you know, this is making sure that, to the best
583
00:35:16.079 --> 00:35:18.519
of our ability, that people who are more or less
584
00:35:18.559 --> 00:35:22.800
similarly situated are put in districts together. That has a
585
00:35:22.840 --> 00:35:26.719
partisan valance to it as well. You know, it helps
586
00:35:26.840 --> 00:35:30.119
ensure that you're not going to have people, to the
587
00:35:30.159 --> 00:35:31.719
extent we can do it, We're not going to have
588
00:35:31.760 --> 00:35:34.639
people along the Ohio River in a district that is
589
00:35:34.800 --> 00:35:39.800
actually governed by the city of Columbus and vice versa.
590
00:35:39.920 --> 00:35:41.719
Make sure the people in the city of Columbus aren't
591
00:35:42.199 --> 00:35:45.360
really governed by people in Appalachio along the Ohio River.
592
00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:49.760
And I think that is something that should appeal to partisans, frankly,
593
00:35:50.840 --> 00:35:53.039
because you're going to set up some swing districts this
594
00:35:53.079 --> 00:35:57.280
way naturally, but you're also going to ensure that like
595
00:35:57.360 --> 00:36:00.480
these red rural areas get represented by one of their own.
596
00:36:01.400 --> 00:36:03.920
And that's in fact what jerrymandering does. I mean when
597
00:36:03.960 --> 00:36:06.320
you take a look at all the extreme forms of
598
00:36:06.400 --> 00:36:08.360
jerry manner, when you take a look at the reason
599
00:36:08.400 --> 00:36:11.440
you have these oddly shaped districts and fingers is to
600
00:36:11.480 --> 00:36:15.639
try effectively to disenfranchise a class of voters which often
601
00:36:15.679 --> 00:36:18.760
not only have partisan concerns, but have these regional concerns.
602
00:36:19.199 --> 00:36:21.199
In Illinois, you've got a lot of people who are
603
00:36:21.199 --> 00:36:24.800
governed by Chicago and Chicago suburbs and not as many
604
00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:27.760
as their population would entitle them to who are in
605
00:36:27.800 --> 00:36:31.199
the rural regions in the outstate. And in Texas you
606
00:36:31.239 --> 00:36:33.119
have the reverse, you know, which is that a lot
607
00:36:33.119 --> 00:36:38.039
of urban people are being governed by Republican suburbanites as
608
00:36:38.039 --> 00:36:40.360
opposed to having as many districts as they would if
609
00:36:40.360 --> 00:36:43.679
they weren't being chopped up and ferried out to rural
610
00:36:43.719 --> 00:36:47.039
and suburban areas that will elect Republicans.
611
00:36:47.719 --> 00:36:50.639
Yeah, it's the same thing with in Virginia, the map
612
00:36:50.679 --> 00:36:53.199
that was ultimately struck down by their state Supreme Court.
613
00:36:54.800 --> 00:36:58.800
There are people in the literal mountains, you know, probably
614
00:36:58.840 --> 00:37:01.519
should have gone over with West Virginia in the Civil War.
615
00:37:01.599 --> 00:37:05.360
But like rural super rural mountainous areas, there weren't a
616
00:37:05.400 --> 00:37:08.440
district that was going to be controlled by voters in
617
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:13.440
one of the five slices of Fairfax County. You know,
618
00:37:13.679 --> 00:37:17.159
I just don't. I'm not. I'm not as offended by
619
00:37:17.159 --> 00:37:19.159
that as some just because I know what's going on
620
00:37:19.159 --> 00:37:22.719
on a national scale. But from a good government perspective,
621
00:37:22.719 --> 00:37:24.440
that's not how it's supposed to work. There was a
622
00:37:24.480 --> 00:37:27.719
district that was like the Shenandoah Valley and mountain areas,
623
00:37:27.760 --> 00:37:30.000
and then there was like Southwest Virginia got some of
624
00:37:30.079 --> 00:37:34.480
those mountain counties as well, and so everyone got represented,
625
00:37:34.599 --> 00:37:37.079
got represented by someone I shouldn't say everyone, but like
626
00:37:37.119 --> 00:37:41.079
most people got represented by someone who at least had
627
00:37:41.079 --> 00:37:46.239
a clue what their non partisan goals were or needs were.
628
00:37:47.400 --> 00:37:52.559
And we had gary Mandering or jerrymandering has been with
629
00:37:52.679 --> 00:37:55.039
us since the early days of the Republic. It's called
630
00:37:55.559 --> 00:37:59.119
jerry mandering because of Elbridge. I was taught by an
631
00:37:59.119 --> 00:38:02.960
Englishman that it's pronounced with a hard gie gary. But
632
00:38:03.119 --> 00:38:06.360
to the governor of Massachusetts who created a combination of
633
00:38:06.400 --> 00:38:11.679
counties that resembled a salamander, and hence it was labeled
634
00:38:11.719 --> 00:38:17.840
the Gerrymander. But even back then you did not have
635
00:38:18.199 --> 00:38:21.400
you know, let's take a little bit of New York
636
00:38:21.480 --> 00:38:24.239
and string it out to rural Long Island.
637
00:38:24.280 --> 00:38:27.039
Back when it was Rhode Island rural.
638
00:38:28.199 --> 00:38:31.519
You had all counties that are added, or you had
639
00:38:31.559 --> 00:38:35.800
whole cities that were added, and that in itself necessarily
640
00:38:35.960 --> 00:38:42.320
limited the partisan impact that those crude nineteenth century jerrymanders
641
00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:43.039
could actually have.
642
00:38:44.480 --> 00:38:47.760
That's right, I mean I think we should. You know,
643
00:38:48.039 --> 00:38:50.840
Ohio had a whole I don't want to be pollyannish
644
00:38:50.880 --> 00:38:53.960
about this, because Ohio had a whole county requirement. And
645
00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:57.360
we actually redrew our maps four times in the eighteen eighties,
646
00:38:59.000 --> 00:39:02.039
and it was little like you know, one party took
647
00:39:02.039 --> 00:39:05.039
over the legislature, readrew the congressional district, then another party
648
00:39:05.039 --> 00:39:08.159
won the legislature, redrew all the maps. So we've been
649
00:39:08.199 --> 00:39:11.199
here before, and they were pretty they were reasonably effective
650
00:39:11.239 --> 00:39:13.960
at what they did, but you know, nothing like what
651
00:39:14.039 --> 00:39:17.079
you you have, not on a scale. I shouldn't say
652
00:39:17.119 --> 00:39:19.000
nothing like, but on a scale, not on a scale
653
00:39:19.199 --> 00:39:22.280
of what you have today and what you can accomplish
654
00:39:22.639 --> 00:39:25.880
when you're drawing maps, especially with one person, one vote
655
00:39:26.440 --> 00:39:31.679
separating you from any realistic ability to keep county lines intact.
656
00:39:32.599 --> 00:39:36.119
And so you just have more degrees of freedom when
657
00:39:36.119 --> 00:39:40.639
you're drawing maps today. But once you start slapping on
658
00:39:40.760 --> 00:39:43.320
those constraints, like I said, you wouldn't be able to
659
00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:47.239
do Illinois, and you wouldn't be able to do what
660
00:39:47.320 --> 00:39:50.239
Texas did, and you wouldn't be able to do what
661
00:39:50.280 --> 00:39:52.599
California did. Now does that mean you're going to get
662
00:39:52.599 --> 00:39:57.079
to perfect one to one correlation between presidential vote share
663
00:39:57.360 --> 00:40:03.400
and districts carried by parties? Probably not, But again that's
664
00:40:03.719 --> 00:40:06.280
as far as I'm concerned. Once you opt for single
665
00:40:06.320 --> 00:40:08.920
member districts, that's a subsidiary consideration.
666
00:40:11.519 --> 00:40:13.920
Now, there are two things that other countries that have
667
00:40:14.000 --> 00:40:19.079
single member districts use that have a further impact in
668
00:40:19.159 --> 00:40:24.280
some sense on both proportionality of the vote and constraining
669
00:40:25.159 --> 00:40:28.239
Gary Manderin. And that is, first of all, they have
670
00:40:28.320 --> 00:40:32.000
a wider variance that you will tend to see that
671
00:40:32.360 --> 00:40:36.320
Australia or Britain don't have the narrow one person, one
672
00:40:36.440 --> 00:40:39.199
vote that says you have to be as near as practical,
673
00:40:39.320 --> 00:40:42.400
they'll allow you a five percent variance, and that's used
674
00:40:42.440 --> 00:40:47.000
to keep cities in town or wards intact. And the
675
00:40:47.039 --> 00:40:51.119
other thing that on both England and Australia do is
676
00:40:51.159 --> 00:40:55.239
they don't draw their districts on the base of population.
677
00:40:55.320 --> 00:40:58.159
They draw their districts on the basis of eligible elector,
678
00:40:58.280 --> 00:41:01.360
so you have one elector one vote, not one person
679
00:41:01.480 --> 00:41:05.239
one vote, which of course, and they both have substantial
680
00:41:05.239 --> 00:41:09.960
immigrant populations and that has an effect, which is to say,
681
00:41:10.079 --> 00:41:14.239
highly populated areas with a lot of immigrants don't have
682
00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:19.880
as many representatives per population unit as citizen drawing districts.
683
00:41:20.320 --> 00:41:24.320
But of course the immigrants can't vote. So in America,
684
00:41:24.400 --> 00:41:27.280
where we have the one person, one vote rather than
685
00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:33.960
one elector system, you have massive imbalances between the number
686
00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:37.440
of eligible voters in a congressional district. You know, between
687
00:41:38.679 --> 00:41:41.079
take a look at some of the immigrant heavy areas
688
00:41:41.079 --> 00:41:44.079
in the Central Valley that cast like one third as
689
00:41:44.119 --> 00:41:47.119
many votes as heavy citizen areas. And then you of
690
00:41:47.199 --> 00:41:50.280
course got the question of children, which you know, last
691
00:41:50.320 --> 00:41:53.920
time I checked, children can't vote if you have high
692
00:41:53.960 --> 00:41:57.679
senior areas. High senior areas have more votes per representative
693
00:41:57.719 --> 00:42:01.440
than areas with high numbers of fans. Is because the
694
00:42:01.519 --> 00:42:05.239
kids don't vote, but they're still being allocated district What
695
00:42:05.280 --> 00:42:07.639
do you think about one or both of those to
696
00:42:07.719 --> 00:42:13.280
be added to the traditional systems to further permit or
697
00:42:13.360 --> 00:42:15.440
constrain caring meander.
698
00:42:17.119 --> 00:42:21.480
Yeah, so, as you know, for state legislatures, we have
699
00:42:21.559 --> 00:42:24.920
that variance, and the bottom as far as I can tell,
700
00:42:24.960 --> 00:42:29.800
hasn't fallen out from democracy, especially if you were to
701
00:42:29.880 --> 00:42:34.239
part with a strict criteria that you can't split counties
702
00:42:34.719 --> 00:42:38.400
or municipalities more than you need to, right, because that
703
00:42:38.519 --> 00:42:40.639
kind of helps do away with the concern well, what
704
00:42:40.679 --> 00:42:44.599
if you underpopulate the democratic districts or overpopulate the Republican
705
00:42:44.599 --> 00:42:47.760
ones or whatever. Like, If you're going to vary from
706
00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:50.039
the one person, one vote criteria has to be for
707
00:42:50.119 --> 00:42:54.960
a good reason. So yeah, I think I think the
708
00:42:54.960 --> 00:42:58.960
strict one person, one vote is actually kind of silly.
709
00:42:59.400 --> 00:43:01.559
I get the motivation for it, but the truth of
710
00:43:01.599 --> 00:43:04.360
the matter is a congressional district in Rhode Island right
711
00:43:04.400 --> 00:43:08.519
now has about five hundred and fifty thousand people. Congressional
712
00:43:08.559 --> 00:43:12.039
district in Delaware has about nine hundred thousand, almost a million.
713
00:43:13.159 --> 00:43:15.920
We don't have strict one person, one vote. We know
714
00:43:15.960 --> 00:43:18.960
that the census numbers aren't one hundred percent accurate, so
715
00:43:19.559 --> 00:43:23.360
it's just a legal fiction. So yeah, I would one
716
00:43:23.440 --> 00:43:25.559
hundred percent be in favor of adding like the plus
717
00:43:25.599 --> 00:43:29.400
or minus five percent variants. As for doing it on
718
00:43:29.480 --> 00:43:34.719
the basis of electors or citizens or you know, whatever
719
00:43:34.800 --> 00:43:41.119
other basis you can imagine. Yeah, I'm completely I shouldn't
720
00:43:41.119 --> 00:43:44.199
say completely that I see the argument, and I would
721
00:43:44.760 --> 00:43:47.039
probably be favorably inclined to our because you do get
722
00:43:47.039 --> 00:43:50.599
these kind of rotten boroughs where you know, a large
723
00:43:50.639 --> 00:43:55.800
portion of the electric just is an allowed to vote,
724
00:43:56.840 --> 00:43:59.599
And I can there are plenty of good philosophical reasons
725
00:44:01.199 --> 00:44:07.880
not to wait the representational aspect of democracy towards the
726
00:44:07.920 --> 00:44:12.320
people who have actually made permanent commitments towards the country
727
00:44:12.360 --> 00:44:16.039
and become citizens. But my feelings on that aren't as
728
00:44:16.039 --> 00:44:17.960
strong as the one person, one vote, because I do
729
00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:22.119
think Robert Borke in Tempting of America actually had I mean,
730
00:44:22.119 --> 00:44:26.559
obviously it's a controversial book, but I think his narrative
731
00:44:26.920 --> 00:44:32.800
of he was on the commission for Connecticut drawing maps.
732
00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:35.840
In the first one person, one vote reapportionment, he said,
733
00:44:36.079 --> 00:44:38.079
it was a nightmare. Like all these things that we
734
00:44:38.119 --> 00:44:40.880
wanted to consider and had historically considered, we no longer
735
00:44:40.920 --> 00:44:43.599
could because we were chasing down the rabbit hole of
736
00:44:43.599 --> 00:44:47.039
getting the population balanced. And I think in a lot
737
00:44:47.039 --> 00:44:51.519
of perverse ways, the Supreme Court enabled the gerrymandering that
738
00:44:51.559 --> 00:44:55.280
we have today by taking away a lot of the
739
00:44:55.320 --> 00:44:58.840
constraints we had on what you could do with one person,
740
00:44:58.840 --> 00:44:59.400
one vote.
741
00:45:00.440 --> 00:45:04.440
Yeah, And the thing is that in one sense, the
742
00:45:04.480 --> 00:45:08.960
one person, one vote responded to very real problems, you know,
743
00:45:09.079 --> 00:45:15.320
like the county system in California, where Los Angeles County,
744
00:45:15.440 --> 00:45:18.800
of multimillion people sent one member of the state Senate
745
00:45:18.840 --> 00:45:24.000
and a tiny little county or a couple of counties
746
00:45:24.039 --> 00:45:26.880
combined into one district I had under one hundred thousand
747
00:45:26.880 --> 00:45:29.079
people and had the same representation, Or the state of
748
00:45:29.119 --> 00:45:34.880
Tennessee that hadn't redrawn its lines in fifty years, so
749
00:45:34.920 --> 00:45:40.760
that it was meant to prevent cities and their growth
750
00:45:40.800 --> 00:45:44.000
from dominating the royal areas and the legislatures. But it
751
00:45:44.039 --> 00:45:46.360
strikes me that you could have gotten rid of those
752
00:45:46.800 --> 00:45:52.440
imbalances or those injustices without jumping to the one person,
753
00:45:52.559 --> 00:46:00.159
one vote standard that then becomes ridiculously rigorously applied, at
754
00:46:00.239 --> 00:46:04.639
least at the congressional level, so that you have a
755
00:46:04.800 --> 00:46:08.280
false equality that anyone who knows anything about the census
756
00:46:08.320 --> 00:46:11.280
knows is absolutely fictional.
757
00:46:11.119 --> 00:46:12.440
From the moment that it's wrong.
758
00:46:15.400 --> 00:46:18.239
What would you what would you say could be done
759
00:46:18.360 --> 00:46:20.679
or should be done? Now, some of this stuff is
760
00:46:20.760 --> 00:46:24.760
Supreme Court's ruling, So it's almost like the Court if
761
00:46:24.800 --> 00:46:29.639
you were, you know, if you could be jerrymandered into
762
00:46:29.719 --> 00:46:32.360
being five of the nine justices and write your own
763
00:46:32.400 --> 00:46:37.280
majority opinion, Sean, what would your majority opinion that would
764
00:46:37.480 --> 00:46:43.239
establish fair redistricting guidelines if we're going to have single
765
00:46:43.280 --> 00:46:45.880
member districts actually look like?
766
00:46:48.039 --> 00:46:49.519
Yeah, so I think.
767
00:46:50.880 --> 00:46:51.920
You know I would.
768
00:46:53.199 --> 00:46:57.559
I would allow deviations from one person, one vote, so
769
00:46:57.840 --> 00:47:03.360
long as those deviations clearly served some other purpose. So
770
00:47:03.599 --> 00:47:06.880
one thing that happened when Bernie and I were drawing there,
771
00:47:07.599 --> 00:47:12.440
there's actually kind of north of the Rappahannock, east of
772
00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:15.480
the Blue Ridge, there's like a square of counties, and
773
00:47:15.480 --> 00:47:18.519
if you add them all up, it is almost perfectly
774
00:47:20.039 --> 00:47:25.039
four districts. It is off by two hundred people. And
775
00:47:25.119 --> 00:47:27.880
yet we had to go like, find a collection of
776
00:47:27.920 --> 00:47:31.000
census blocks in Albemarle County that added up to two
777
00:47:31.119 --> 00:47:37.719
hundred people. So it's just ridiculous, like especially since the
778
00:47:37.760 --> 00:47:40.920
district's probably the day those districts go into effect because
779
00:47:40.920 --> 00:47:43.039
of population shifts, they're going to be off by more
780
00:47:43.079 --> 00:47:47.199
than two hundred people. So you know, you can deviate
781
00:47:47.239 --> 00:47:48.840
from one person, one vote as long as it's for
782
00:47:48.840 --> 00:47:50.760
something like you can show like, okay, I'm keeping these
783
00:47:50.800 --> 00:47:54.639
cities hole in order to do this, okay, And then
784
00:47:54.679 --> 00:47:59.840
it would be the municipal and county splits rule. Once
785
00:47:59.880 --> 00:48:02.519
you start drawing in a municipality or a city, you
786
00:48:02.559 --> 00:48:05.440
have to finish drawing in it, and once you start
787
00:48:05.519 --> 00:48:07.679
drawing in a county, you have to finish drawing it
788
00:48:07.719 --> 00:48:11.760
before you can proceed to the next county over. And
789
00:48:11.800 --> 00:48:17.159
then a compactness criteria. The compactness criteria are tough because
790
00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:20.519
you know, we have these various measures like RIAC and
791
00:48:20.519 --> 00:48:22.880
Polsby Popper, but they don't really mean anything, Like a
792
00:48:22.960 --> 00:48:25.800
ReOC scorer of point three doesn't tell you much. But
793
00:48:27.000 --> 00:48:29.599
I would spend some time figuring out exactly how I
794
00:48:29.639 --> 00:48:33.119
wanted to do that. To give map dars some real guidance.
795
00:48:34.159 --> 00:48:36.519
It might even be an arbitrary number, like your RIOC
796
00:48:36.559 --> 00:48:41.199
has to be greater than point three, or you can't
797
00:48:41.199 --> 00:48:44.639
have a deviation of more than fifteen percent in your district.
798
00:48:44.719 --> 00:48:49.880
ReOC scores absent some compelling reason. But I think you
799
00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:53.239
do need some sort of compactness definition in there to
800
00:48:53.320 --> 00:48:56.599
keep people from doing what Elberts Jerry did or Gary
801
00:48:56.679 --> 00:49:00.719
and stringing together towns in a salamtar. But I want
802
00:49:00.719 --> 00:49:04.039
to emphasize even that would be better than what we
803
00:49:04.119 --> 00:49:07.320
have today, where you can just kind of draw, like
804
00:49:07.360 --> 00:49:10.719
a semiconductor, a string of census blocks to cut through
805
00:49:10.760 --> 00:49:14.360
an area to get you over to some more democratic votes.
806
00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:18.519
Oh yeah, No, I mean on Dave's redistricting app. I've
807
00:49:18.519 --> 00:49:25.159
resisted the temptation to break the tracts into Gary manders.
808
00:49:25.199 --> 00:49:29.159
Don't do that, so you can. You've got them splitting
809
00:49:29.199 --> 00:49:32.760
precincts and using census blocks and using it as what
810
00:49:32.800 --> 00:49:35.159
we call them, the business transportation to get you where
811
00:49:35.199 --> 00:49:35.719
you wanted to be.
812
00:49:36.159 --> 00:49:36.599
That's right.
813
00:49:37.039 --> 00:49:42.480
Yeah, So Sean, where can my listeners follow your work?
814
00:49:43.400 --> 00:49:46.960
So there's a couple of places. I'm on Real Clear Politics.
815
00:49:47.519 --> 00:49:50.000
You can find me on Twitter. It's just sean trendy
816
00:49:50.079 --> 00:49:54.199
straightforward Twitter handle. You can find me at American Enterprise Institute.
817
00:49:54.239 --> 00:49:58.280
And finally, if I can advertise myself a little bit,
818
00:49:58.280 --> 00:50:00.920
you can find my stuff on the Stubborn Thing podcast
819
00:50:01.719 --> 00:50:05.199
via AI with my co host j cost And.
820
00:50:05.199 --> 00:50:09.199
What does Stubborn Things address as its regular topic or
821
00:50:09.400 --> 00:50:12.679
does it have a focus or a theme that animates
822
00:50:13.239 --> 00:50:14.239
the discussions?
823
00:50:14.840 --> 00:50:18.920
Yeah, so Jay and I both have PhDs, but both
824
00:50:18.960 --> 00:50:21.119
of us believe that that's one of the least interesting
825
00:50:21.159 --> 00:50:24.960
aspects of our biographies. Not that a not to dismiss
826
00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:27.480
a PhD, but some people with those degrees think that
827
00:50:27.519 --> 00:50:30.360
it makes them to be all end all. We like
828
00:50:30.400 --> 00:50:34.159
to look at these big historical and policy questions, drawing
829
00:50:34.239 --> 00:50:37.920
upon our understanding of the literature, but letting our actual
830
00:50:38.360 --> 00:50:41.599
kind of basic political knowledge and just common sense sometimes
831
00:50:42.039 --> 00:50:45.480
guide the discussion. And so that's our goal. Sometimes we
832
00:50:45.559 --> 00:50:47.760
do better than others, but we enjoy it.
833
00:50:48.719 --> 00:50:49.039
Well.
834
00:50:49.039 --> 00:50:51.159
It's aum's wonderful. And one of the things I know
835
00:50:51.280 --> 00:50:55.320
you're doing is going down and ranking presidents historically. And
836
00:50:55.400 --> 00:50:57.760
I see you've gotten to Herbert Hoover and I'm looking
837
00:50:57.800 --> 00:51:02.000
forward to Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nick and James Earl Carter,
838
00:51:03.039 --> 00:51:07.159
and George W. Bush, who I personally was one of
839
00:51:07.199 --> 00:51:09.239
the four worst presidents in American history.
840
00:51:09.280 --> 00:51:11.079
But I think I'm an outlier.
841
00:51:11.840 --> 00:51:13.079
Not as much as you would think.
842
00:51:13.360 --> 00:51:14.960
Spoiler alert, Well.
843
00:51:14.719 --> 00:51:21.440
Good, I won't be completely exiled from polite company well sewn.
844
00:51:21.440 --> 00:51:23.400
As always, I learn a lot when I talk with
845
00:51:23.480 --> 00:51:25.639
you and listen to you, and I'm glad that you
846
00:51:25.679 --> 00:51:28.760
were able to make time for my listeners to learn
847
00:51:28.800 --> 00:51:30.400
from you, and I look forward to having it back
848
00:51:30.519 --> 00:51:31.400
on Beyond the polls.
849
00:51:32.119 --> 00:51:35.239
Thank you so much for having me. That's it for
850
00:51:35.280 --> 00:51:35.719
this week.
851
00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:38.199
Next week we'll take a look at the Republican Senate
852
00:51:38.280 --> 00:51:42.639
runoffs in Alabama and Georgia with Cook Political Reports Jessica Taylor.
853
00:51:43.119 --> 00:51:46.639
Until then, let's reach for the stars together as we
854
00:51:46.800 --> 00:51:49.320
journey beyond the polls.